transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:02] Welcome to Pollercoaster, I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Today I'm breaking down what Congressman Eric Swalwell is dropping out of the California governance race means and what comes next. Trump's latest approval ratings after a particularly volatile weekend to say the least, and where a 2028 potential Democratic candidate stand right now. Then I'll answer some Discord questions. Joining me as always is our amazing producer, Caroline Reston. Caroline, how are you?

Speaker 2:
[00:22] Dan, I'm great. I'm really eager to hear your take on what's going on in California, so I really wanna just jump right in.

Speaker 1:
[00:29] But let's do it.

Speaker 2:
[00:30] So there's been a major shake up in the California governor race. Congressman Eric Swalwell dropped out after multiple news outlets reported an alleged pattern of sexual misconduct. Truly have so many questions. It's been such a stressful election. But here's my question now. Do you still think there's a chance that Democrats will get shut out of the general here?

Speaker 1:
[00:49] You know, the last time we talked about this race, this was the big concern. We know there's been this real fear as the polls have gone on. It has shown two Republicans, Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, ahead of all of the Democrats. And as listeners to the show, almost certainly no. California has what's called a jungle primary system, which means that in the primary election, the candidates of both parties go against each other and the top two finishers advance to the general election. That could be two members of the same party, right? And many times in California, it's two Democrats who advance to the general election. In the polling in this election to date, the two Republicans running, Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, Bianco is a sheriff, Steve Hilton is a Fox News personality, have consistently finished in the top two positions with a array of Democrats beneath them. And there's been this real legitimate fear that Republicans could somehow win the California's governance race by Democrats stepping on a rake and not making the final two. I think those fear, for two reasons, and we'll get into the Swalwell allegations in a second, but two things I think have changed that to have made it so that that possibility is highly unlikely. The first is obviously Eric Swalwell dropping out. He was the, you'd probably say he was the front runner. He's been typically the top Democrat by a point or two over Katie Porter and Tom Sawyer, but they've all been kind of bunched together. With him leaving the race, that's gonna leave 12 to 15% of Democratic voters to go to the other candidates. That increases the likelihood that one of those Democrats will get above Bianco in the polling, who's typically been second. The other thing that happened even before Congressman Swalwell's campaign imploded was that Donald Trump, for reasons that no one understands, endorsed Steve Hilton randomly for governor. He must have been watching Fox News, been pleased with something Hilton said, and then endorsed him. The Republicans in the state did not want Trump to endorse anyone. Hilton did not want Trump's endorsement, had not asked for Trump's endorsement, because the way to think about this is, is generally in statewide races in California, Democrats get 60 percent of the vote, Republicans get 40 percent of the vote. Right now, the Republicans are doing well was because the two Republicans were basically evenly splitting the 40 percent, and something like nine Democrats were evenly splitting the, or close to evenly splitting the 60 percent. If one of those Republicans gets most of the 40 percent, you know, gets into the 30s, that other Republican, the other Republicans are going to drop below the Democrats. And Republicans knew their only chance to win this race was to lock out the Democrats from general election. Trump made that highly unlikely because he's a doofus.

Speaker 2:
[03:34] How likely do you think that Trump thought Hilton was related to the Hilton family? Any chance?

Speaker 1:
[03:40] You know, it's a possibility. It's a hotel name and he likes hotels. He's been a big fan of Steve Hilton for a long time. Hilton has hosted a Fox show on Sunday nights, I think. It's like right in Trump's prime viewing era, where he's not even supposed to be at work at the time, or at least in the office. So for many, many years, he's been truthing, tweeting, commenting about Steve Hilton's show. So whether he thought he was related to Paris and the hotel chain this whole time, I do not know, but it's a distinct possibility.

Speaker 2:
[04:13] That's where my headspace went to. There's no, when someone endorses you at this point, you're not, he's not going to reject the president's endorsement, probably.

Speaker 1:
[04:21] No, no, he can't, and he put out a statement being very, very grateful for it, because it does ensure that he will make the general election, which he was going to probably win. Good for him, but it's not good if he wants to be governor, because in a one-on-one race, a Democrat is going to win in California against a Republican 99.9% of the time, statewide at least.

Speaker 2:
[04:42] So is this giving Democrats an opening to start rallying around one candidate? Who is the front runner going to be?

Speaker 1:
[04:48] Well, it's interesting, right? So the prediction markets, which we don't put a ton of stock in, but they're just like, we haven't seen polling since this happened. In the prediction markets, Tom Steyer became the front runner very quickly, and then a lot of people also thought that San Jose mayor Matt Mahan's chances had increased. Mahan is way down the bottom of the polls at like 300% or so. I think that that is probably, it's not clear, but I'm not so certain that either of those two benefit the most. There's been internal polling that's leaked out from both the Porter campaign and the Steyer campaign, which shows that a plurality of amongst Swalwell's voters in polling done before the allegations came out. Swalwell voters' second choice was more often than not Katie Porter. It was in the Porter polling, it was 42 percent were Katie Porter, and then 20-something percent Tom Steyer, and they spread out amongst the rest of them in single digits. Even in the Steyer polling that leaked out, the plurality of Swalwell voters' second choice was Porter, but it was a little closer between her and Steyer. They were essentially tied among them. If you kind of think about it, Porter and Swalwell probably do overlap the most in terms of their supporters. They're figures who have come to the forefront as part of the anti-Trump resistance. That is powerful in California. That's how you end up with Adam Schiff as your senator. But it's hard to say. So I don't think we're gonna end up with one singular person, but we are in a primary, and we just need one of them to do better than the other Republican. And I think that's more likely today. But it's kind of, who would benefits the most is an open question, but I think people are underpricing Porter's chances post Swalwell dropping out at this point.

Speaker 2:
[06:39] Yeah, I feel like there is a, like I would have thought, I guess, a few years ago, Katie Porter really would have been the front runner here. It's interesting how people are talking about her in this conversation. It feels very much like in the background, second choice.

Speaker 1:
[06:54] She was the front runner before those videos came out. First, the video of her having that interaction with the reporter in Sacramento, where she got up and walked up in the middle of the interview, and then the other one where she yells at a staffer.

Speaker 2:
[07:05] Oh, I haven't seen the one yelling at a staffer.

Speaker 1:
[07:09] It's not a good video for Katie Porter. But those really stalled her momentum, and I think they pushed a lot of the groups that are very powerful in California politics, like the California Teachers Association and SCIU, both of which had endorsed Swalwell, to back someone other than Porter. And so we'll see now the Swalwell is out of the race, whether she can regain that momentum.

Speaker 2:
[07:30] Yeah, we got an interesting listener question going back to Eric Swalwell and his alleged misconduct. Claire, can you go ahead and play that voicemail?

Speaker 3:
[07:41] Hey guys, this is Paul, and I'm calling for pretty much any show that wants to air the question. This Eric Swalwell business seems very Epstein-like to me. If everybody in Washington knew that he was a cretin and didn't say anything on behalf of either the victims or the party, aren't they also partially responsible for that behavior? And now I have to ask the depressing follow-up question, which is, did any of you guys know about it? And so now I'm depressed and hopefully you are too. Take care and goodbye.

Speaker 1:
[08:24] Yeah. This is a really good question. So I wrote in my newsletter, the message box over the weekend that this was an open secret in Washington, and that required a lot of people. That's a lot of people followed up to say, well, if it was an open secret, why didn't you guys talk about it? What did you know? And so let me sort of explain what I mean by that. In recent weeks, there's been a lot of conversation online, some of it from anonymous accounts, some of it from influencers, who kept saying that Swalwell had a reputation as someone who was inappropriate with younger women on Capitol Hill, right, with young staffers. And that he was sort of, and that it was sort of had a reputation among young female staffers as someone who you didn't want to be alone with, necessarily. I learned of that online, right, from reading these things. Now, there was no direct evidence had been presented yet, but people kept saying, these stories are going to come out. They were saying it like that, these stories are going to come out. It wasn't people saying, that I saw at least, that this happened to me from Eric Swalwell, right? And this is, you know, there's obviously this incredibly disturbing account of sexual assault that was in the San Francisco Chronicle. But then there's a lot of all these other stories that are about him, you know, as, you know, friending young staffers on Snapchat and then having inappropriate conversations with them. And, you know, maybe they hooked up and someone should perform, that's unclear. But there's just this lot of like, you're going to hear about this, you're going to hear about it, Eric Swalwell, you should be prepared for this. But there wasn't evidence of it. This was news to me, like we, it's been a long time since I have worked on Capitol in a long time since I've been in DC. So I certainly am not familiar with, you know, super familiar with like the gossip that's going on around there, like this kind of thing. There are things that staffers know on Capitol Hill, you know, who's inappropriate, who are the bosses you definitely don't want to work for, you know, which members are getting too drunk at events, things like, there are things staffers know that when I worked on Capitol Hill or was in Washington, I would hear those things, don't hear them now. And it's hard when you have a platform like we have to pass all, like I don't want to pass along rumors absent.

Speaker 2:
[10:34] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[10:35] Evidence, right? Like I didn't, I was, you know, I didn't dispute the people online. Some of them who were, you know, who were putting their names to this, that they knew about, that they knew of this reputation, that they were wrong, but you also don't want to say, you want someone to vet that information and then talk about it. As, you know, as I wrote about it after the San Francisco Chronicle came out, it does raise some questions about some of the decisions made by some of the members who endorsed them, Adam Schiff, Ruben Gallego, some of the other members of the California delegation and these labor unions, that some of the, just, that there was a cloud there that people should have looked into, you know. I am not, there is not to my knowledge, a reputation of him, of anyone knowing about the sexual assault, like that, that's, it was more, it was more inappropriate behavior from a boss and a married boss at that. But it does raise, you know, real questions about the decision making process that somebody's never done. And the other thing that's interesting here is everyone knew this was coming. If not this story, some, this exact story, as horrifying, it's really one of the more horrifying things you'll read in the bravery of this former staffer who came forward and the truly excellent reporting done by the San Francisco Chronicle. Like, they buttoned this story up every way you possibly could and did it right, so that there could be, the worst thing the reporter can do in a situation is not do their job, which would leave the woman who came forward to hang out to dry and to raise questions. And you read this story, there is just, there's really no way to even, you can't, it's like, it's like there are, she talks to the ex-boyfriend, you heard about it in real time. The reporters have, see text messages that were sent at that time about it. They talked about it, like it just was really well, it really impressed a piece of journalism, which served the woman who came forward very well. But it does raise questions if you, like, you know, if enough sort of staffers knew about this sort of behavior, why didn't some other, why didn't some of these members ask questions before they endorsed? Why didn't some of these unions ask more questions before they endorsed? And so yeah, it is a, it's, the whole thing, the whole thing is really gross and it's one of the reasons why people end up hating politics, because these people who you really come to admire and Swalwell had huge devoted fans of him, people in California and people listen to our podcast and everywhere else. And he, it turns out that he is not, according to all of these reports, the person that they thought he was. And that, that is very disenchanting for a lot of people.

Speaker 2:
[13:08] Yeah. And it just goes to show that these stories of women being, you know, assault, allegedly assaulted are still just not important to people. They'd rather gloss over it than ask questions, they'll ask hard questions, and it's just really depressing to still hear about this.

Speaker 1:
[13:24] Also, the other thing about this is, is like Eric Swalwell put out a video on Friday night after these came out, where he said he denied the, you have to kind of read between the lines here because it's pretty vague, but it's pretty clear he is denying the allegations of sexual assault, but admitting to affairs of some kind or because he says, he says, I'm denying all these horrible things, but I'm not a perfect person. I made mistakes in my marriage and that's between me and my wife. It's not if the people you're making a mistake with are people who work for you. That is not a private matter. That is a massive power imbalance. But just the sort of sociopathic behavior it would take to have behaved the way he reportedly has for years now, and then subject yourself to the scrutiny of a governor's race.

Speaker 2:
[14:13] I never understand these people with huge skeletons in the closet that they know are in the closet, that want to put themselves out there. It just goes to show they think they can fight it if it ever comes up, because people don't really give a shit.

Speaker 1:
[14:25] But imagine, this is a little like the Cal Cunningham situation in North Carolina in 2020. What if this had come out in October after he was the nominee?

Speaker 2:
[14:36] Oh God.

Speaker 1:
[14:37] I mean, does the Democrats still win in California? I don't know, maybe, but is that a risk you really want to take? This should be a risk-free endeavor, the California Conference Race. We should get the best person who can't lose.

Speaker 2:
[14:47] It should be easy. Yes. Okay. Let's pivot. Also over the weekend, Trump continued his threats against Iran and attacked the Pope for being anti-war, and then proceeded to depict himself as Jesus in a now-deleted Truth Social post. Are we just desensitized to this megalomania or are voters actually starting to turn on this batshit behavior?

Speaker 1:
[15:13] Did you see what Trump's answer was when he got asked about the Jesus picture?

Speaker 2:
[15:17] No.

Speaker 1:
[15:17] He said he didn't know it was Jesus and he thought it was just a doctor. He was portraying him as a doctor.

Speaker 2:
[15:20] I've been seeing people talk. That's honestly not the worst defense.

Speaker 1:
[15:29] Well, in general, if you were the leader of essentially the evangelical Christian movement, you should know what Jesus looks like. But the funniest part about the Pope thing is, he thinks it's this sick burn to call the Pope weak on crime, as if there's a silent majority of Americans who want to law and order Pope. What are you talking about?

Speaker 2:
[15:51] I know. It's like the one person who I don't need to be-

Speaker 1:
[15:55] Tough on crime?

Speaker 2:
[15:56] Tough on crime, if anything, to be- Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's such a weird fight.

Speaker 1:
[16:04] This is an interesting test case because for much of the last decade of American politics, Trump has been able to act like an absolute ass all the time and have it not hurt him politically. Then for a lot of voters were able to distinguish between what they thought was in their interests either economically or ideologically, and they're willing to put up with a lot of dumb shit from Trump. Embarrassing stuff. Remember in 2020, some of the research that Democratic groups did showed that one of the things that was the biggest annoyance to soft Trump voters was his tweeting. They hated that he did it. They thought he looked like an asshole. It was embarrassing to them as Trump voters because that's what they're constantly having to defend at Thanksgiving dinner with his tweets. They wanted him to tweet less. This is along those lines. It's just like him being a buffoon. The problem for Trump is this hits different when gas is $4 a gallon. It hits different when people think the economy is going into a recession, when the price of everything is up. In 2019, up until COVID hit, they will put up with a lot of shit from their president if prices are low and the economy feels good.

Speaker 2:
[17:22] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[17:22] When prices are high and the economy doesn't feel good, they have a low tolerance for this. It's just like they're constantly looking around at Trump. They see how things are going in the world and in their own financial situation. They're looking at Trump and like, what are you doing? You're fighting the Pope. You're fighting Iran. You're building a ballroom. You're fixing the reflecting pool. What are you doing? Why aren't you doing the stuff you said you were going to do? This falls in this line. I was listening to the Sarah Longwell's focus groups over the weekend. She was doing two-time Trump voters who had, or multiple time Trump voters, I guess, who had soured on Trump. A lot of the conversations around, this took place obviously before the Pope attacks, but a lot of it was around, it's like, why aren't you focus on the real stuff? And this is an example of that. So I think, it's not that we're not at, there's not some magic moment that's going to be the breaking point, but all of these things are more Brooks on the load that are what are weighing him down to. He's now at his lowest approval rating at any point in his two terms in, other than in the immediate aftermath of January 6th.

Speaker 2:
[18:29] Yeah. One of our Discord users, Petit Ombre, asked, will the attacks on the Pope impact the needle? I'm thinking specifically of heavily Catholic caller communities around Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, or in swing areas like Ohio. Is he really pissing off the Catholics here?

Speaker 1:
[18:45] I mean, he fought with the other Pope too. So he's fought with a lot of Popes. I don't know. There's been a lot of over the course of time, for many, many years, especially in the 80s and 90s, these caller counties that had heavily Catholic working class voters were huge swings. Macomb County in Michigan is the classic one. There was this view that you needed Democrats who were good on Catholic issues to do well in those counties. When Obama, there was a big debate about, the debate was not within the administration, it was outside the administration after Obama included contraceptive care in the Affordable Care Act. People were like, you were going to lose the caller county, the Catholic vote over the caller, all the Clinton people marched in one by one to tell us we were fucking morons and we were going to lose Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin over this, and Obama did better in those counties than anyone had done in a long time because their primary identity wasn't Catholic, they are Catholic, but your primary political identity is Republican or Democrat, not Catholic or Protestant. I think that's probably the case here where if you were a Catholic who was still with Trump, I don't think an attack on the Pope is going to be the thing that changes it. I don't think it's going to make a huge difference specifically among Catholics, but it's not good for Trump, that's for sure.

Speaker 2:
[20:11] Yeah, it's an interesting timing because we were talking about hysteria, this rise of the trad caths online, Catholic content.

Speaker 1:
[20:20] Young voters are becoming, there's a huge swath of young men in particular who are becoming Roman Catholic. JD Vance is one of those men who became Roman Catholic, interested to hear what he has to say about this, Marco Rubio Catholic. There are a lot of prominent Trump supporters who should have to answer for this.

Speaker 2:
[20:36] Yeah. Let's talk about 2028 and where voters stand now with candidates who might potentially run. Yale Youth Poll dropped a new poll asking voters if the Democratic primaries are being held today, who would they support? Can you just walk us through what the poll showed and any major takeaways you had?

Speaker 1:
[20:54] Sure. It showed that Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom are the strong frontrunners. This is the Yale Youth Poll, but it is a poll of all voters with a oversample of young voters. And Pete Buttigieg and AOC kind of fall over that next tier there. Among young voters, I think what would surprise people is that the candidate who does best is Kamala Harris and AOC does second best, or they both do. I think they're basically, I don't have it all at the top of my head, but I think they're basically tied. But they both do better than anyone else. And then Newsome and Pete come in, their success is coming almost entirely from older voters. The Kamala Harris thing is counterintuitive for a lot of people because the sense was young people didn't love Kamala Harris. You'd want to know how much of that is name ID and how much of it is love for Kamala Harris is the question. And typically in polls, the person with the highest, for in early primary polls, the candidate with the highest name ID almost always is in the lead. That is usually not a position you want to be in. And for Democrats in 2008, that was Hillary Clinton. And for Democrats in 2004, that was Joe Lieberman. For Republicans in 2008, that was Rudy Giuliani. Because Joe Lieberman had been the vice presidential nominee in 2000, so he was the best known of them. In 2020, Joe Biden started out that way and he ended the campaign in first. But there are also young people are not... A lot of Democratic primary voters are young Black voters. And you know, Kamala Harris did well with Black voters. So it's early to say, I think... It tells me a couple of things. One, her chances are... People are pretty... Like people in the quote unquote, no, insiders, analysts, are pretty dismissive of her chances. They're probably overly dismissive. I think she has... There's some real hurdles there we can get through. And they probably overpriced some of the less known people, like the Shapiros, people like that. And probably underpriced Harris and AOC.

Speaker 2:
[23:06] Yeah. Can I ask one question? I don't know if it's really a question, or if not just me yelling. Something I found so infuriating in this, as reading through the full results, was that the poll found that Democrats see Gavin Newsom and Mark Kelly, who came in with 7% of the overall vote as the most electable candidates in 2028. Gavin Newsom's sure... I like Mark Kelly. There's no shade at Mark Kelly. But he has 7% of the vote, and yet he's still seen as more electable than AOC and Kamala Harris. Like it's just so, it's so frustrating. And I'm sorry to cry woman, but I'm crying woman a little bit here.

Speaker 1:
[23:44] Yeah, no, you should. There is no question that voter, that there is this sense among voters that particularly after 16 and 24, that men, and specifically White men, are more electable than women, and specifically women of color. Now the Kamala Harris situation here is unique. Like she's definitely getting a penalty because of these racial and gender tropes. She also is gonna be, it's a hard sell that she's the most electable since she lost the election a year and a half ago.

Speaker 2:
[24:11] Okay, that's fair.

Speaker 1:
[24:14] And there's obviously a lot of discourse about AOC's electability. She is a young woman of color. She had been associated with the Democratic Socialists. You know, the thing I'd say about all of this is, electability is a self-fulfilling prophecy. No one knows if you're electable or not until you win. So all winners are electable and all losers are not electable. Can you make some guesses based on what the average voter likes about a candidate? Or what sort of candidate profile might be most appealing to the voters you need? Sure, but it's guesswork. And so Mark Kelly, I'm surprised enough people know about him to give him that. His name ID is, the depth of knowledge of him is high enough that people can make that assessment. But you kind of go to a voter and you're like, he's a white male center from Arizona who is an astronaut. That probably sounds pretty electable to people. But I wouldn't put too much. You have identified a true problem in all the electability discourse because there is this heavier burden put on women and any candidates of color. But it's early to take too much from this poll on that question. It's also kind of a dumb question. Well, it's not a dumb question because electability is going to be this driving choice because people aren't going to want to lose. But how you assign those values to individual candidates doesn't matter until you actually see them. If you would ask people in 2006, can a guy named Barack Hussein Obama from Chicago win, who'd been in the Illinois State Senate two years earlier? That is not the profile of someone who seems electable. He gets on the campaign trail, all of a sudden, he seems electable. That could be for anyone of these candidates. They get on the debate stage in the primaries, they kick ass, they generate huge crowds, those electability numbers could move.

Speaker 2:
[26:09] Yeah. Okay. Let's go to some more listener questions. Claire, I believe we have one more voicemail to play here.

Speaker 4:
[26:18] Hey, guys, long time listener, first time dialer. I'm Sam from Colorado and I'm calling in with a question for Dan on Pollercoaster. So anyway, the crux of what I'm getting at here is I've been noticing a little bit more existential panic about the looming demographic crisis, I suppose, we have coming past 2030 with all of the different census things with, of course, electoral votes leaving California and other liberal strongholds and moving into more conservative and obviously deeply jury bandered places. Specifically, I've been seeing a lot of concern about how the left may never be able to actually win a majority again after 2030 because of the demographics shifting. I feel like at the same time, I'm seeing a lot of existential dread about this, but also if it's that existential, I feel like not enough people are talking about it. So I just feel like I really mixed signals on how important this actually is and what exactly this is likely to impact and how. So really curious to hear Dan's take on how this demographic shift might change us in 2030 and beyond. Thank you. Bye.

Speaker 1:
[27:28] Okay. So the question here, so people understand is, every 10 years we do the census, and after we do the census, we reapportion electoral votes among states based on population increase and decline, and the states who, this probably goes to the same, but the states who gain electoral votes get new house seats, and states who lose electoral votes lose house seats because your number of electoral votes is the same as your number of house seats. Based on current population trends, driven in part by just general migration, but also specifically around COVID, the way it's looking right now, California and New York are going to lose potentially seven seats between the two of them, seven electoral votes. And Texas and Florida are going to gain potentially seven electoral votes. I think Pennsylvania is likely to lose one. I think North Dakota gets an extra seat likely because of the oil boom there. Some things around that. But the basic point is the electoral map, as we understand it today, is going to become much harder for Democrats in the 2032 presidential election because of the census. And, you know, if Texas is incredibly gerrymandered and Texas gets more house seats, that's not good for Democrats. Florida is incredibly gerrymandered and it gets three, you know, three more house seats or four more house seats. That's bad for Democrats. I bring this up a lot. I have existential dread about this. And my dread about this is that Democrats aren't thinking about it enough because we have to think big. Because there is a way in which we can stumble ass backwards into the White House in 2028 because Trump is so unpopular. Like, and then we can take the... It's a little bit how what happened in 2020. 2020 was an aberration of the broader political trends because of COVID. Because COVID doesn't happen, Biden probably loses. Trump stays in. Biden wins, we think the Trump era is over. And here we're back in the Trump era. And so I want Democrats to think big about how we rebuild a coalition that can win under this new map. And the good news for us is we've already seen dramatic shifts away from Trump and Republicans among Latino voters. Texas and Florida become more problematic for Republicans if they're not getting Trump 2024 numbers among Latinos. But I think it's really, really important that we think big about it. We think about rebuilding a coalition that we think long-term about becoming a party that can win in more places, not just Texas and Florida. Although this is one reason why I think we need to be competing in Texas and in Florida as much as possible so to prepare for this moment. But can we go back to winning Ohio regularly, Iowa regularly? Are there states in the upper Midwest like Montana that we used to be able to win every once in a while that we can win Senate and governor seats there? And that requires having a big picture conversation with everything's on the table on how to become a party that probably is a multiracial working class party that can win Latinos in Texas and Florida, but also white working class voters in Ohio and Iowa. And so there's work to be done here. We should be focused on it. But I think it's a way of thinking about the broader challenge of what we have to become if we don't want to just ping pong back and forth between normalcy and insanity every 48 years.

Speaker 2:
[30:57] Yeah, ideally that wouldn't, that'd be nice not to happen. Okay, Storm2K asks, with more polls showing Democrats having a better chance of gaining in both the House and Senate in November, including with Cook Political Report moving several more races in Dems' favor, what are the realistic chances of Democrats this fall if things continue at pace? Is it too early to really know?

Speaker 1:
[31:20] It's not too early to know that this is a very good political environment for Democrats. We also have very good Senate candidates in Ohio, North Carolina, Alaska, and Texas, who have put those states in play. We're still in the primaries in Iowa and Maine, and we have this looming race in Michigan, which is the one Democratic seat I'm most concerned about. There's a primaries in August and we'll see which Democrat ends up taking on Mike Rogers, but that is a race that we have to take seriously. Democrats have a real shot. Are we the favorites to take the Senate right at this moment? I would, probably not, but we have a very, very real shot. Things are moving in our direction. We have good candidates. Our candidates are well-funded. They're out raising Republicans, driven primarily by grassroots donations. Republicans have all the money they need. You have to assume at some point the Republican base wakes up a little bit, but we are very well positioned. We have an opportunity to do it. And if you'd asked me like five months ago, if Democrats had a shot at taking the Senate, I probably would have said almost not. And here there's a very real shot.

Speaker 2:
[32:22] I remember doing that episode where it was late last year. I was feeling very grim. We have a great follow-up question to this from Trott to Boston to round out our questions here. Can you talk more about the Maine Senate election? No real question, just generally. What's going on in Maine? How's everything going?

Speaker 1:
[32:40] There is no race that has talked about more, not just on Crooked Media podcast, but just on Podcast Genoia. Then the Maine Senate race is getting a ton of attention. It's been getting a ton of attention. It's continuing to get a ton of attention. Here's where we stand right now. And the primary is in early June, but Graham Plattner has by all accounts, public polling, private polling, leaks from the Mills campaign and the DSCC and elsewhere. Plattner has opened up a double-digit lead over Governor Mills. Mills launched a pretty intense series of negative ads against Plattner bringing up the Reddit comments that he had said, that he had read the Reddit comments he had posted. Those must not have worked because the Mills campaign has stopped running them. And there is the sense, it is early and there's still time left, but there is a real sense that Janet Mills is running out of time to catch up to Graham Plattner. And if you listen to some of her supporters and some of the reporting in the Washington Post and in Notice in recent days, there's just this question of what is her recourse here? Like what strategy can actually get her to win this race? Now, one of these reports also, I think it was the Post also said that, you know, Senator Schumer and his team still believe that Plattner can't win. The election, I think, I don't know whether they're saying that to try to generate support for Mills or if they really believe that. That's an insane proposition. Might he be, like, does he have vulnerabilities? Absolutely. Could he lose? Absolutely, anyone can lose. Susan Collins is a very, very, very strong candidate, as annoying as that is. But, you know, the Maine Center Race remains fascinating. It's also fascinating because it's like, it gets at these big questions of like, what the party should be looking for in a candidate, what, you know, how much risk should we take on to get candidates who are anti-establishment and outsiders, you know, what sort of political judgment do Senator Schumer and Washington Insiders have? It's just, it remains a fascinating race. So we'll keep talking about it. Because I think if Platner wins, that's going to win the primary. That's going to tell us a lot about sort of the state of play in the party. If Mills comes back and wins, that's going to raise some other questions. And then, you know, I don't care who you support now, whoever wins that primary, Mills or Platner, we have to get 100% behind that person. Because there is no path that that Senate majority just talked about without winning Maine.

Speaker 2:
[35:04] Who does Susan Collins want to win?

Speaker 1:
[35:06] You know, that's a great question. The Republicans say publicly that they want Platner, which usually means they want Mills. But I mean, it's unclear. If you're an ad maker, you're probably excited at the prospect of running, because you care more because just you're thinking about what kind of cool ads could you make? You're probably more excited about running against Platner. But if you're Susan Collins, you probably would much rather be on a debate stage with Janet Mills and Grant Platner. The contrast of Platner as an outsider who was younger against Collins, who was the ultimate insider, who's older, I think is a worst... Like if I was a Republican, I would probably rather run against Mills. But I also thought the DSCC was fucking bananas for endorsing Janet Mills to begin with. So I am not unbiased in this, not in the sense that I endorse one candidate or the other, I haven't, just that my view is that younger outsider candidates are better for Democrats than older insider candidates in this election, but we'll see.

Speaker 2:
[36:11] Yeah, we'll see. All right. That about wraps up all my questions. Listeners, if you want to send a voicemail, 1-855-HEYFOTP, please send us a voicemail. We love them.

Speaker 1:
[36:22] Thanks to everyone for riding the Pollercoaster. We'll be back with a new episode in two weeks. This show is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are Caroline Reston, Elijah Cohn, and Claire Fogarty. Our video producers are Ben Hefkoat, Kirill Pavloviev, and Kenny Moffat. Thanks to Ashley Campion, David Toledo, Haley Jones, and Daisy Cruz for reduction support every week. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.